Bing-bong “flight blah-de-blah is now boarding from gate number 12” We all rose from our chairs having necked 4 reasonable, yet heavily overpriced pints of lager and headed off towards the gate. It was 07:30 on Tuesday the 12th of April, the day before we play Juventus in the 2nd leg of the European cup quarter final, a game that puts us 180 minutes away from a place we thought we’d never get back to. A place synonymous with Liverpool football club – The European cup final.

Walking down to the gate, we, like everyone else was weighing up who was on the flight. Our crew, or motley crew to be precise consisted of the weeble (arse like two bags of cement), Skin (Still stuck on the Annie rd in the 70’s), Chegz (48 going on 19, in his head), Kell (the world’s greatest thief) His lad and yours truly, the good looking one of the bunch, naturally of course. A modern day David Niven, I’ll have you know. So, we’re all weighing one another up, this is after all, is Juventus away. We’d beaten them the week previous at Anfield 2-1, Garcia’s goal still being talked about and there’d been a bit of hands across the water stuff, but everyone knew, that this, this was going to be a bit different with us going over to them. The last time I’d been close to a load of Juventus fans (didn’t go down the away end the week before) was on the Royal Iris about 18/19 years ago when the then Farm head boy and all round top beaut (just messin) Peter Hooton along with Samsom and some other Scallies (Ooo there’s a word) had arranged a sort of ‘Soz fest’ for what went on the year before. We were sorry of course, but I think they thought it was a set up as when the boat arrived at the pier head, about 150 trabbed up, permy mulleted , cord jacketed scalls stormed on board like a load of pirates looking for the Rum, well brown –bitter to be honest, but our rum!

Anyway, fortunately, the plane was filled with what I can only describe as – “a group of blokes who all looked, as if they could all look after themselves” And I don’t mean getting around on the London underground either.

Now, the one good thing about going on a good way, is that you can tell almost immediately once you get on a plane, or on a coach, or in a car - is whether or not it is going to be a good trip. This didn’t let down – two steps onto the plane and being met by a match-fart and about 15 lads giggling like kids set the tone, it was going to be a good’un!

We’re up in the air, Chegz shitting himself as he’s no flyer and everyone else relaxing and eyeing up the stewardess. Turns out that there was just on 100 of us, a private excursion, which at the time was a bit of a coup as the club was trying to control all transport due to the obvious tension around the match. 3 Years previous at the Mestalla, they sent out letters saying if you suffered with vertigo, don’t go. This time, they sent out letters saying if you’re a bad fanny, swerve it….just messin, they never, but there was a heightened sense of nervousness around this game, hence everyone checking everyone out at the Airport.

We drink the plane dry of Ale, not bladdered just that they didn’t carry enough ale. Banter galore on the plane, the poor stewardess’ got some right mither tho, good natured of course. I doubt any of them had been asked if they could have their cock-pits looked at, so often.

We land in Turin, gets a bit edgy now, we’re here. We all pile off the plane and the entire ‘Bastardo il brigade de Turin’ were there to greet us. Lovely! Hands across the water I guess.

So we goes through customs with some of the most vicious looking dogs I’s ever seen in me life. Who’d a thought that people would want to make Rottweiler’s with pointy ears?

Gets through and out the terminal with a guard of honour by the De Police de bastardo, to where two coaches are waiting. We all pause, I think “theses can’t be ours, these must be for a Prime Minister or something” there’s about 20 police bikes abar 20 vans and, wait for it, 2 tanks! Seriously 2 tanks, the kind you used to get on Dr Who with the thin barrel, with the brigadier pointing to Jon Pertwee and telling him to leg it! So, we’ve got tanks! Get us!

We piles onto the coach, waits about 15 minutes and realise some of our coach and the other coach’s lads were missing! Turns out, that interspersed with the devil dogs from hell, was sniffer dogs from the house of Channell - the kind that don’t bite, but sniff really, really well. Our coach lost 3 lads and I think the other coach lost about 2. Must have been for smelly socks or something?

The coaches move off and it’s about 12:00 and all you can see is blue flashing lights. Everyone’s a bit pissed off now. The coach starts to make its way out of the airport grounds when it lurches to a stop, the door opens and of all the things, a photographer jumps on the bus and starts taking photos of us on the bus - everyone’s out their seats telling him to do one (and words to that effect) we’re all a bit frustrated as we’ve been on the go for about 5 hours now.

We were tired and desperate men, we needed a pint.

The photographer scurries off the bus and we get back underway and think nothing more of it. We start driving along and once we hit the motorway our escort reduces down to next to nothing, even the tanks left us(personally I was gutted as I love Dr Who), and we head to our hotel.

Now, fair play to our man who was running trips in them days, as he’d gotten whiff of Turing being a dry city 24 hours before and after the match. So in his wisdom, he’d booked us into two hotels in the quaint little town of Asti, yes Asti, the home of Asti Spumanti. Which was outside the jurisdiction of the Turin bizzies. That didn’t stop a self-induced panic when someone mentioned Asti had an ale ban on as well. So by the time we get there, we’re all gagging for a bevvy and flapping that there’s an ale ban on.

We arrive and get the bags unpacked, well I say unpacked, all I had a was a plazzy bag with a change of boxies in. Something that didn’t go unnoticed and was mentioned more than once, especially when I claimed a hanger for them just so I didn’t feel left out when everyone un-packed in our 3 man room.

Pushing on and we’re out the hotel, its 3 in the afternoon, I’m in Italy and I’m scouse. Let’s fuckin roll!

We get to the first café-bar thingy and order 6 beers; the fella behind the bar is like ‘what the fuck’ then another few lad’s pile and then some more. Poor sod had never been so busy in his life on a Tuesday afternoon.

We move through a few bars, Chegz doing an impersonation of Bobby Sands at one, when he went the bog needing a dump - The bogs in this place we’re the hole in the floor variety. He duly left to tidy himself up and met us back in the square, which by this time had seen most on the trip congregate in. The bog was a wall to wall mess.

The square whilst not the biggest had two bars and that’s all that mattered, from there we spent the following few hours reciting all the Liverpool classics and some, not some famous and some quite infamous, songs.

Thoughts start turning to getting some scran as this was early evening and we were all starting to get a bit hungry. Some say eating is cheating when you’re out on the ale, but we’d had nothing, so we leaves the square which had by this time been filled by the local youth, some tasty birds, and the Asti SPG.

As is the way we walk off looking for food and end up in another bar, where, they have these nibbles out. We’d agreed walking up we all fancied a bit of a fancy scran, but when offered with free food, no scouser is going to turn that down. So we polish of these 2 platters of bruschetta things, we start talking about where we should go next and then another 2 platters of nibbles show up. So, we scoff them, it’d be rude not to and this continues for about an hour of us buying ale and us being rewarded with food. We we’re like chimps in an IQ test.

We move on and continue to sample the wares of Asti and the rest of the night becomes a bit of a blare other than watching the Inter/AC game which was on the Tuesday, which got abandoned due to Inter fans seeing their arse because it looked like they were going out. We eventually end up at a the bar were everyone seems to congregate; it’s that well known European phenomenon ‘the bar where everyone congregates at the end of the night’. This may have something to do with it being the only bar open, I could be wrong! Its like it has a homing beacon so everyone gets to find it.

So we all drank to the early hours, singing and teaching the Italian bar staff(Torino fans) samples of English phrases and songs like - Everton are shite, the Luis Garcia song and a Liver bird upon my chest, amongst others(the latter being sung about 10 times) we were after all, on the eve of a European Cup Quarter final game to get us into the semi’s, we were back where we belonged, so as all good reds do - we sing of past glories and hail the upcoming glory. Touch of nerves as well if I’m brutally honest.

We awake to some very heavy heads and we’re told the coach is leaving about 1, so I take this opportunity to flick through my extensive clothing selection and change and head down stairs. Pans out there was no brecky included, so we had to go out. We go out into the town, which by now looked totally different, plus, it was market day. We eventually find the market and me and Skin; wander around to get some food, which after a hard night on the ale required something that was near an English brecky – No chance! But we did find this tardis of a van that folded out into a shop, that sold sausage and chips of all things, so we necks that and heads back the hotel.

As we get the hotel all the lads are walking around, holding newspapers, pointing at the front page laughing and fuming, we walk up to them to find them all holding copies of what we would call a ‘Metro’ style regional newspaper and on the front of it is a picture off all of us and the rest on our coach, all pulling faces, giving the fingers and in mid-flow with a thumb of telling someone to fuck off under the headline ‘Arrivare Hooligani’ The bastard photographer had been working for the area’s free paper! So whilst we were all gutted about it at first, we all ended up seeing the funny side of it.

Anyway, the coaches arrive just around the corner and we’re all mulling around with our bags, well, not me like, I’d ditched my old luggage so I was travelling light. The lads put their bags on the coach and we get on, as we get on, we notice the bog has a padlock on it, when asked; the driver says we broke the bog on the way here. We’re not having that, but what can you do, so we gets on the coach and we’re talking about using the bog before we get going and we can see a few lads going to a bar across the road from where we are parked and coming back sheepishly. Didn’t think nothing of it and one of our lads decides to use the toilet, he goes and he comes back sheepishly and hunched, were he proceeds to pull from under his jacket a bottle of Remy Martin brandy! Pans out, when you went in the bar, they direct you to the men’s toilet which is through a door, down a corridor to where the men’s bogs are, a corridor that houses the stock for the bar! You don’t need to be a mind reader to realise what happened next - everyone needed the toilet!

The coach sets off, and once we leave Asti, it all comes out, Brandy, Whisky, JD, Vodka, you name it, it was on there, within half an hour the coach is bouncing and I mean bouncing, the Italian job had nothing on this coach.

Some great old songs getting sung and one great little story about the night before – when I said it was just blokes on this trip, that wasn’t entirely true. There were one or two young kids who’s been brought by a couple of the older fella’s and this one old fella and his lad, had gone up to the Inter/AC game the night before by train, but due to all the kick-off and the police keeping people back, they had missed their train back, taxi’s wouldn’t pick them up near the ground, so when getting to the city centre, they had to get a Taxi all the way back to Asti, from Milan. When they get to Asti, the taxi driver wants 250 Euro’s for the trip, so this old head, takes them to this hotel, tells him he has to go and get his money from his room, him and his lad get out, walk into the hotel and straight through and out the back of the hotel and into the back street and did one! The hotel wasn’t the fella’s, left the poor taxi driver waiting! Fella reckons he, the driver, charged way over the odds and didn’t want to run it on the clock and wanted a fixed price. Now, I’m not judging or nothing, but on a coach, half pissed, going to what felt like the lion’s den, you couldn’t help but not find it funny.

We get to Turin, where we are parked up with about another 10-15 coaches, we all and I mean the entire coach, falls of the coach pissed and we’re told we have 2 and a 1/2 hours before we are to get back to the coaches but don’t look for a bevvy as “all the bars are shut” so we all trundle off after leaving out stash on the coach and split up into our own little groups. We must have walked for about a good full 10 minutes before we come across a bar in student area, that’s open. Is right, we’re in and we’re on it.

Students were made up with us, games of pool, having a laugh with them, really good few hours to be fair. We were all sort of gutted to get off as they were all sound. Though they did tell us to be careful as they had heard there was going to be trouble.

As we get back to the coaches the arl pre match tummy rumbles starts, this is compounded more by the sirens blaring everywhere and the whispers L’pool had ben jumped. Shit, this is it, its happening! We all sobered up very quickly.

We all pile onto the coach and head up to the ground in an escort of about 10 coaches. Everyone singing and getting the royalty treatment, by not stopping at a single set of lights. Some lovely gestures given by the kids, the ‘throat cut’ signal being the order of the day. Sound.

We get to the ground and there is tear-gas in the air. No probs, we’d seen all this before but because of who it was, it just seemed to add to it all. Liverpool stewards are telling everyone to get straight in, as is the way, we have a mull around the car park, a huge car park I might add but nothing happens and we go in.

Gets our place on the terrace and it’s about an hour before kick-off. Time passed as we played the dodge the projectile and bottle full of piss game. Ammo being supplied by the Juventus fans. How kind.

The team is read out and we can’t believe our ears “did they say Alonso?” Alonso is playing, is right!The game kicks off and this was to be not the greatest of games, if you weren’t a scholar of the game, then this game would be lost on you.

Juventus with all their guile and their eternal puppeteers of Nedved and Del-Piero accompanied by the likes of Ibrahimovic, Montero , Cannavaro, Thuram, Zambrotta, Emerson, Camoranesi and Buffon in goal, had us all wondering “how are we going to get through this without conceding a goal and especially as Stevie G was out?"

Well, step up to the plate Mr Igor ‘big nobly cock’ Biscan, The Antonio Nunezmister, Our Lil Luis and the man who stares at the grass – Milan Baros. Funny that name Milan isn’t, sort of had an omen to it.

Juventus may have looked at that ramshackle gathering of footballing near demi-gods and thought, “we-a can-a do-deez” but, we had a something else, we had Dudek! Yes Jerzy Dudek was back, so suffeeeeer Juventus…..oh did I forget to mention the defence?... A defence that delivered probably the best defencive display seen by an English team, since……well, probably the last time we played.

That night Finnan, Traore, Hyppia and the hardest scouser that never come from L’pool, Jamie Carragher, played the most beautiful of nullifying defensive master-classes, that would have had the manager whispering in his sleep those immortal words “It feels as if I have been on a permanent honeymoon since I arrived here; I am on a cloud and I feel as if with Liverpool I have found the love of my life” Christ we were a fucking boss defencive unit back then.

So, the match meanders to its inevitable conclusion - an unstoppable force had met its match in the form of the immovable rocks of Jamie Carragher, Sammi Hyppia and the rest of the Liverpool team, a team that had gone from almost out, to now in the semi- final.

Every red that walked out the ground that night, after the usual hour plus keep behind and the dodge the piss bottles game - every one of us didn’t just feel that we could win the European cup, we believed we could win the European cup.

The rest of the trip went pretty much as before, old songs on the coach, everyone finishing of their selection of spirits and talking about how now Europe is scared of us. We had after all, knocked one hell of a team out of the European cup and looked comfortable in doing so in their own back yard.

We had one more farewell from a Doctor Who tank and that was us, off into the Turin night sky, knowing, we were going to win the European Cup.

"As is the way we walk off looking for food and end up in another bar, where, they have these nibbles out. We’d agreed walking up we all fancied a bit of a fancy scran, but when offered with free food, no scouser is going to turn that down. So we polish of these 2 platters of bruschetta things, we start talking about where we should go next and then another 2 platters of nibbles show up. So, we scoff them, it’d be rude not to and this continues for about an hour of us buying ale and us being rewarded with food. We we’re like chimps in an IQ test."

The chants for Kenny Dalglish that were heard again on Wednesday do not necessarily mean that the fans see him as the saviour. This is not Newcastle, longing for the return of Kevin Keegan. Simply, Dalglish represents everything Hodgson is not and, in fairness, everything Hodgson could or would not hope to be.